Data Science and 2016 Presidential Elections

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad Much has already been written about the failure of data science in predicting the outcome of the 2016 US election but it is always good to revisit cautionary tales. The overwhelming majority of the folks who work in election prediction including big names like New York Times' Upshot, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight…

Do the Right Thing and leave Judgment to Algorithms

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad In Islamic theology it is stated that for each human being God has appointed two angels (Kiraman Katibin) that record the good and the bad deeds that a person commits over the course of lifetime. Regardless of one’s belief or disbelief in this theology, a world where our deeds are recorded…

Modeling Artificial and Real Societies

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad Science Fiction literature is fraught with examples of what-ifs of history which speculate on how the would have looked like if certain events had happened a different way e.g., if the Confederates had won the American Civil War, if the Western Roman Empire had not fallen, if Islam had made inroads…

Algocracy: Outsourcing Governance to Algorithms

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad In the late 17th century Gottfried Leibniz conceived of a machine that could be used to settle arguments so that instead of arguing people will just settle dispute by saying “let us calculate.” On closer inspection this idea has an uncanny resemblance to deciding disputes by delegating the decisions to algorithms.…

The Past of Islamic Civilization

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” ― George Orwell, 1984 These days every other person seems to be concerned about the future of Islamic Civilization. From the Islamists, the traditionalists, the Liberals, the Conservatives etc. almost everyone seems to have…